The Everything Einstein Book: From Matter and Energy to Space and Time, All You Need to Understand the Man and His Theories

By Shana Priwer and Cynthia Phillips

Albert Einstein was the most famous and influential thinker of his time. His theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical physics gave birth to a new era in scientific thought and changed the ay people see the universe and their place in it. The Everything Einstein Book walks you through his rise from a lowly patent clerk to a groundbreaking scientist and explains the theories that brought him fame and world renown. Covering everything from photoelectric effect to the unified field theory, this book answers all your questions about the genius, his work, and the age that influenced him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Dec 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781605505244

Book preview

Introduction

ALBERT EINSTEIN WAS ONE of the most important scientists of all time. The impact of his work was not limited to the realm of science, however. Einstein’s discoveries and humanitarian causes affected people all over the world, from all walks of life. In fact, Einstein was named Person of the Century in 2000 by Time magazine, beating out such historical figures as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mohandas Gandhi!

This book examines the impact that Einstein had throughout his lifetime, from his birth in Germany in 1879 to his death in the United States in 1955. Einstein’s work was a reaction to the changing scientific times–from the simple, elegant view of the universe of the nineteenth century to the more complex picture that began to emerge at the turn of the twentieth century.

Einstein’s university years and his difficulty finding an academic post following his graduation from a Swiss university led to his accepting a job at the Swiss patent office. It was while he was employed in this position that he married his first wife, Mileva Maric, a fellow student, and published an astonishing series of papers.

These papers, all submitted to scientific journals in 1905, included one on the photoelectric effect, one on special relativity, one on the equivalence of matter and energy, and one on Brownian motion. Einstein became established as one of the pre-eminent scientists of the twentieth century, and in fact he won the Nobel Prize for his work on the photoelectric effect. These papers also laid the groundwork for much of Einstein’s later career; one of these foundational works included his famous equation E=mc² as well as special relativity, which Einstein would later expand into the theory of general relativity.

Einstein also had an important role in the development of quantum mechanics, a theory with which he was never completely comfortable. While quantum theory describes the universe in terms of probabilities, Einstein believed that the behavior of particles and energy should be able to be uniquely determined.

By using his theory of general relativity to model the entire universe, Einstein also laid the groundwork for the new field of cosmology. In the course of his studies of the universe, Einstein predicted the existence of dark matter and black holes and laid the foundation for the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. His theories also predicted the expanding universe, although Einstein originally included a term in his equations to keep the universe static in keeping with the ideas of the time. He would later call the addition of this term one of his greatest blunders.

Einstein’s later years are also fascinating. After he moved to the United States in the 1930s to escape Hitler’s growing threat in Germany, Einstein became increasingly involved in humanitarian concerns. He was an outspoken advocate for Jewish people who needed a safe place to live and also was a lifelong pacifist. Despite or perhaps because of his commitment to pacifism, he wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt to suggest that the United States should work to develop an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany had a chance to do so.

Einstein’s complex role in twentieth-century science can be seen in the scientific quest he spent the rest of his life pursuing, a unified field theory that would unite all of physics into one simple, elegant relationship. Ultimately unsuccessful, this quest was also reflected in Einstein’s desire for a single united world government, which he saw as the only way to ensure peace.

Einstein’s legacy is further seen in the way that he has become the icon of intelligence in popular culture. From Baby Einstein videotapes to his appearance in soda commercials, Einstein’s disheveled appearance has become the standard image for a genius.

Chapter 1

Why Einstein?

Albert Einstein is perhaps the most famous scientist of modern times, but he was not only a scientist. He was also an ardent humanitarian who worked for peace and for equal treatment of all people. His theories changed the scientific world of the twentieth century, and his work on humanitarian issues helped change the lives of many people whom he helped find a better life.

Einstein’s Impact

Albert Einstein was, without a doubt, one of the most influential people of all time. He was a scientist, a humanist, and a father. While he is best known for his special and general theories of relativity, Einstein contributed much more, both to the scientific community and to the world at large. His interests were varied, and his intelligence immense. With a natural capacity for both thought and reason, it is no surprise that Einstein had such an amazing impact.

Have you ever heard of the Big Bang theory of how the universe began? Thank Einstein for laying the groundwork. Did you know that Einstein first proposed the building of the atomic bomb to Franklin Delano Roosevelt? He did, and then later tried to retract the idea. Einstein was not accepted at university when he first applied! He also had his share of layperson drudgery–before making his most important contributions to science, Einstein worked a nine-to-five job in a patent office.

People often think of scientists as highly educated folks who spend all their time holed up in an office. While Einstein certainly spent his share of time in research, his life’s work extends beyond the laboratory. Religion was also important to Einstein. He was a deeply spiritual Jew whose thoughts on religion influenced his ideas about the creation of the world. He spent much of his later life involved in humanitarian concerns, campaigning to convince the United States and other countries not to develop nuclear weapons. He also spent much time writing affidavits and otherwise helping Jews who wanted to immigrate to the United States from various European countries in the years leading up to World War II.

How Did He Become So Famous?

What is it about Einstein that makes people worldwide know his name? Why is he such a familiar figure, even to those who don’t understand his theories? How did one person come to be so widely known? A simple answer to this question doesn’t exist, but one of the goals of this book is to explore all the elements that created the icon everyone knows as Einstein.

Part of Einstein’s fame and recognition was circumstantial. He developed his theories at a time when the world was ready to accept them. The scientific community of the early twentieth century was ready and willing to receive new ideas, and without this support, Einstein’s ideas might have done nothing more than gather dust. The general public was also ready for some good news in the late 1910s, especially after the depression and stress caused by the war years. When Einstein’s theory of general relativity was beautifully confirmed by observations of bending starlight taken during the 1919 solar eclipse, Einstein received international acclaim.

Accessible Science

In addition, the nature of Einstein’s work was such that it could be accepted by those who did not understand it. Einstein didn’t challenge common religious beliefs or attempt to overthrow societal norms. While his work was complex and not readily comprehensible, it also wasn’t blatantly offensive to most people. Had his goal been to prove that God didn’t exist, for example, Einstein’s name probably wouldn’t be known as fondly as it is today, if at all.

Perhaps one of the most famous equations in the world is Einstein’s E=mc², which refers to the equivalence of matter and energy. In this equation, energy (E) is related to mass (m) by a factor related to the speed of light (c) squared.

Einstein’s major scientific works can also be easily stated in terms accessible to the general public, even if the physics and mathematics behind them are far beyond all but the most advanced scientists. Such ideas as the equivalence of matter and energy, as expressed in the equation E=mc², can be understood by just about anyone. So can the idea of living in a four-dimensional universe, with the fourth temporal dimension (time) in addition to the three spatial dimensions (length, width, and height). It is also fairly easy to picture the idea of the warping of space, or the speed of light as a universal speed limit, or a black hole with gravity so strong that nothing, even light, can escape from it. All these concepts are results of Einstein’s work, yet they do not require advanced physics to understand intuitively.

Why Does Science Matter?

A larger issue, of course, is the question of why science matters. Why do nonscientists care about science? From the perspective of the human race as a whole, it is obvious that science is valued. If it weren’t, no one would have ever heard of Einstein. There would be no Nobel Prize in physics. High school students would not be required to study chemistry. No one would know about Saturn’s rings, and famous rock stars would not be spending millions of dollars trying to travel into outer space.

The realm of science might be seen as composed of two main elements: fact and theory. Facts are proven truths that have stood their ground, through the tests of time and the rigors of usage. Facts are things that are taken for granted to be true and unambiguous.

Most facts, though, do not start out as such, particularly in the world of science. In a field where innovation is part of the job, scientists are at times tasked with creating fact from scratch. Such creation does not come easily, nor is it handed to them on a silver platter. People are inquisitive and, by nature, have a tendency to question the environments and situations surrounding them. Sometimes things that are taken for granted as truth have to undergo rigorous examination and questioning by many, many people before they are finally accepted as fact.

Enter the theory. What exactly is a theory? It can be generally defined as a set of ideas that relate to each other in some way. Theories differ from facts in that they are unproven ideas; a theory is, by definition, speculative and not certain. Scientists, musicians, artists, philosophers, and people from just about every walk of life create theories every day. How? Simply by being alive and cognizant.

The Scientific Method

Einstein’s ideas are called theories because they were initially unproven. They did not start out as facts; they were ideas that had to be tested. This aspect is, in and of itself, unremarkable. Most large-scale ideas that present new information, or suggest a reversal of old information, are going to be questioned by someone; as such, they will be considered theories until most people agree on their validity. This is what is called the scientific method–the method by which science tries to develop more and more accurate descriptions of the natural world around us.

The scientific method is the way in which scientists, over time, attempt to construct an accurate representation of the world around us. The foundation of the scientific method is experimental verification–any idea must be tested before it can be accepted.

Hypothesis

The scientific method is the basis of Einstein’s work and of all other scientific research–in the past, present, and future. The scientific method begins with a hypothesis, which is a new thought or idea to explain some observation of the world around us. The hypothesis must be testable; this is the main difference between science and other fields such as religion or philosophy. In science, once a new idea or explanation is proposed, it must make specific claims or predictions that can be tested.

The scientific method consists of the following steps:

Observation of a particular phenomenon.

Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the observations.

Use of the hypothesis to make further predictions.

Performance of experiments to test the predictions made by the hypothesis.

Experimental Verification

The predictions are then tested by experiments performed by many independent scientists, not just the one or ones who initially made the hypothesis. If the predictions made by the hypothesis turn out to be correct, then the hypothesis has been proved accurate; it will eventually become elevated in stature to a theory or a law of nature. Even theories can be overturned. As you will see in the following chapters, Einstein’s theories showed that Newton’s laws of classical mechanics, the established theories of the previous century, did not hold up under certain conditions.

Only a scientific theory that has been subjected to experimental verification can truly be called a theory. An important example is the theory of evolution, which has made specific predictions that have proved correct. This theory can be compared to the idea of creationism, which can make no such predictions. Evolution is therefore a scientific theory, while creationism is not.

Revolutionary Theories

So what made Einstein’s theories so special? One of the primary reasons Einstein stood out from his predecessors and contemporaries is that the theory of relativity (discussed in detail in Chapter 6 and Chapter 12) changed the way scientists fundamentally considered both space and time. Humankind’s place in the universe was seen from a new perspective, and such a notion was both frightening and exciting. Other scientists had important theories; Einstein’s were daring. Sometimes a little excitement goes a long way toward the creation of a legacy!

In fact, Einstein’s ideas were so revolutionary that much of the scientific community initially rejected them as being too outlandish. Einstein won the Nobel Prize in physics, but for some much less controversial work he had done early in his career–not for relativity. It took many years for Einstein’s ideas to become part of the scientific mainstream.

Einstein’s Public Role

Theories do not stand alone, nor are they created by a faceless entity in a vacuum. Einstein himself was, of course, partly responsible for the success and popularity of his ideas. He was not the type of scientist to spend night and day isolated from the public. Quite the contrary; Einstein was involved in science, as well as humanitarian concerns, from a public and political viewpoint as well as research perspective. He was actively involved in many public organizations, including the League of Nations and the German League for Human Rights, and was able to promote both himself and his science on many levels.

Public Speaking

His interest in public speaking undoubtedly helped to provide awareness of his theories. He was in direct communication with world leaders, giving credence to his own research and to science in general. Being both a scientist and a figure of popular culture was enabling to members of the scientific community at large, as evidenced by the large number of radical and critical scientists who were Einstein’s contemporaries.

Through being a public humanitarian, though, he was also able to gain public support for science. Bringing science to the people provided a popular base for Einstein’s research. New scientific research and breakthroughs must be explained to the general public in order to really change the way we see the world, and Einstein’s interest in public speaking provided an immense outlet for potential support and recognition.

Complex Ideas Made Simple

Did most people understand relativity when Einstein first presented his ideas in 1905 with a paper on the photoelectric effect? Probably not. Do most people understand these ideas today? Again, probably not, but lack of general comprehension didn’t hurt Einstein’s reputation. What was significant was the fact that other well-known and well-respected scientists did understand and give credence to Einstein, and the masses were more than willing to follow suit.

Those who wanted to understand Einstein, of course, could. Complex ideas can be broken down, and common terms can be used to decipher a maze of scientific lingo. Anyone who wants to can grasp Einstein’s message.

Einstein’s Science

So what was the gist of Einstein’s work? While he made important contributions to many aspects of science, he is most famous for the theory or principle of special relativity. In a nutshell, special relativity is the idea that no difference can be detected between experiments taking place at rest, versus those taking place on an apparatus under constant motion. Things behave the same on a train moving at a constant speed, for example, as they would if they were just resting on the ground.

Strange Results from Relativity

However, not just objects obey this principle; light does as well. The invariance of the speed of light leads to all sorts of strange consequences, including variations in length and time depending on the speed at which something is traveling! Thus, lengths become shorter and time moves more slowly as one moves at speeds approaching the speed of light.

Einstein later expanded his theory of relativity to include gravity, and this second body of research became the theory known as general relativity. General relativity is based on the principle that acceleration and gravity are indistinguishable. From this relationship come all sorts of odd results, including black holes and the warping of space-time.

Einstein’s main scientific contributions include his work on special and general relativity and his study of the photoelectric effect, which laid the groundwork for quantum mechanics. An application of his theory of general relativity led to the development of the field of cosmology, which is the study of the universe as a whole.

A Place in History

Einstein’s work, of course, did not originate in thin air. His scientific predecessors created the basis from which his work could be conducted, and previous theories gave him the tools he would need to arrive at new theories. His new theories, in turn, laid the groundwork for many of the later scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century, including quantum mechanics and cosmology. In particular, in an early paper, Einstein used general relativity to model an entire universe; he single-handedly started the new field of cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole).

The Search for a Theory of Everything

Einstein’s reputation was unfairly tarnished later in his life by his being called the father of the atomic bomb. In reality, neither his equations nor Einstein himself had anything to do with its development. His later life was spent mostly on a search for a unified field theory that would explain everything in a single, elegant theory. This theory was never realized, and many younger scientists thought that the aging Einstein had wasted the rest of his life on a fool’s quest. However, his vision of a simple, coherent explanation for the way the world works in fact laid the groundwork for string theory, which is a modern attempt to find just such a grand unified theory.

Humanitarian Efforts

Einstein’s search for a unified theory in physics ran parallel with his wish for global peace and a unified world government where people treated other people humanely and sensibly. He spent his life working toward both of these goals, the unity of science and of humanity. While he did not reach either, it can be argued that he made the world a better place on both fronts just through his efforts.

Einstein spent many years working for the fair treatment of people all over the world. His efforts led to the immigration of many Jewish refugees into the United States and later to the establishment of the nation of Israel. Einstein was even offered the presidency of Israel, but he regretfully declined! He continued to work for peace and justice until the end of his life.

Einstein’s Legacy

Einstein’s reputation has endured, and he is undoubtedly the best-known scientist of the twentieth century. E=mc² is probably the most recognized scientific equation among the general public. Einstein was even named Person of the Century in 2000 by Time magazine.

Einstein as Genius

Einstein became the prototype for a certain type of genius as portrayed in popular media and literature. With his wild white hair and lack of socks, Einstein certainly fits our mental picture of an eccentric scientific genius. Einstein has also invaded popular culture–he is commonly invoked as the face of genius, and his face adorns T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other commercial items. What would the modest patent clerk have thought of this kind of fame?

While Einstein’s appearance later in his life certainly fits the eccentric genius stereotype, his appearance earlier in his life, such as when he produced his famous 1905 series of papers, was much more conventional. It was only later in his life that Einstein let his shock of white hair grow out! So perhaps our mental image of Einstein the genius should resemble the buttoned-down patent clerk more than the white-haired eccentric.

One of the main benefits of Einstein’s personal fame is that it brought science into public view. Through the cult of his personality, Einstein was able to gain public recognition of some rather obscure breakthroughs in various areas of physics. Few other scientists have been able to get the public to listen to their theories at all, let alone have them enter popular discussions in ways such as everything’s relative.

Taking Advantage of Einstein’s Status

Today, Einstein’s name is present in society in ways both scientific and silly. The element einsteinium was named after him, in recognition of his many contributions to atomic science. A line of baby products, called Baby Einstein, claims to be able to increase the intelligence of your infant. Capitalizing on the popular correlation of the name Einstein with genius, these products include videotapes, audio recordings, and other items–none of which have anything to do with Einstein! They attempt to provide an educational experience for your child that might help turn her into the next Einstein. Of course, none of this has been proven scientifically, but that doesn’t stop legions of parents from purchasing them, eager to give their children any edge possible!

Why Do We Care about Einstein?

It is precisely Einstein’s many contributions, in a wide variety of fields, that established him as the cultural icon he is today. If he had only created his early scientific theories, he would be remembered by the scientific community as an influential scientist; however, like most scientists, he would be largely unknown to the general public.

It is only because of Einstein’s contributions to science, his humanitarian work, his public speaking, and his unique ability to explain detailed scientific theories that Einstein’s place was firmly established in the realms of popular culture. The myth of Einstein, the Genius, also helped this positioning.

Einstein was a fully rounded person. He was never the kind of single-minded scientist who had no life outside the laboratory. Instead, Einstein had many interests, including music and sailing, in addition to his scientific pursuits. He was married twice, and there was much gossip throughout his life relating to the many women he spent time with. Einstein also had a deeply spiritual side, which was reflected in some of his scientific theories and pursuits.

For all these reasons, Albert Einstein is ultimately one of the most influential figures of modern times. The study of such an influential person, and his many contributions to the world, is as important as it is interesting; this study is the focus of this book.

Chapter 2

Early Life

The first years of Einstein’s life served as a canvas upon which the rest of his career, both personal and professional, would be painted. The basis was formed for his later approach to science, religion, and politics. All of the events that took place in these early years helped shape and create the figure that Einstein went on to become.

The Preschool Years

The life of Albert Einstein began in Ulm, Germany, on March 14, 1879. He was born into a middle-class German-Jewish family, parented by Hermann and Pauline. The small family moved to Munich in 1880. He had one sister, Maria (also called Maja), and a brother, Jakob.

Whether or not Einstein was actually a child genius is the subject of much discussion. Letters from his maternal grandmother suggest that he was already quite creative by the age of two and that his comprehension was quite advanced. When informed of